Scotland's Stone of Scone

How did a medieval Scottish stone become the centre of a daring heist in the 1950's? This is the extraordinary saga of the Stone of Scone, aka the Stone of Destiny, a relic that created the kings of Scotland, is shrouded in myth and legend and was taken by the English. Matt Lewis is joined by Professor Dauvit Broun to unravel the truth behind the tales and to revisit one of the most audacious acts of student rebellion in British history. Check out a 3D model of the Stone of Scone here: https://skfb.ly/oFNIT MORE King Edward I: Hammer of the Scots Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XQhcy5RkBiN2KRl7bKHoG Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/tw/podcast/king-edward-i-hammer-of-the-scots/id1564113746?i=1000723575073 Defending a Castle: Scotland Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Ij54WeWRYBbcaIbRjrcVU Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defending-a-castle/id1564113746?i=1000673418015 Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. The audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producers are Amy Haddow and Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:01Matt Lewis?

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• 0:42Speaker 01

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• 1:16Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.O.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.O.gle/workspacewithGemini.

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• 2:31Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 3:16Matt Lewis?

  It's a cold and misty December. In the biting icy winds, two Ford Anglias are chugging discreetly south along the A74, passing through Carlisle and over the border into England. The drivers of these inconspicuous vehicles are treading a path that many Scotsmen had taken before them in the fight for independence.

• 3:40Matt Lewis?

  History is full of fierce examples. 1315 saw the siege of Carlisle, in which Robert the Bruce plagued the borderlands. Life in the marches has been wrought with bloodshed and devastation.

• 3:54Matt Lewis?

  But the year now is 1950, and instead of spearmen and cavalry leading the charge, four ordinary University of Glasgow students sit behind the wheel as they trundle through the night towards their target, Westminster. The paved A-roads may now be less treacherous than those which saw the end of Alexander III and the beginning of the wars over Scotland's nationhood. They may still be less arduous than the road taken by the disgraced King John Paleal, but for the students, they may as well be those same dirt-trodden tracks. They make their journey with caution, full of anticipation.

• 4:38Matt Lewis?

  After eighteen long hours, the Ford Anglias weave their way into the capital and through the streets of London. The shadows of Aldgate, St Paul's, and the Palace of Westminster fall across them. Kay Matheson, domestic science student and getaway driver, pulls into the cosy Lion's Corner house. Here, tucked in a corner and over a warm cup of tea, they begin to draw up their final plans. Along with Kay sit Gavin Vernon, Ian Hamilton, and Alan Stewart. These daring students have come all this way for one purpose: ending over seven hundred years of Scottish subjugation and reigniting the petition for an independent Scotland.

• 5:33Matt Lewis?

  Looking over the Thames, you can make out the site of Westminster Abbey, which has stood for centuries. Its walls have borne witness to the shifting sands of time, with againt through bloodlines of old or by blood freshly spilt. King after king have, in that very abbey, lowered themselves onto the coronation chair, crowned in sight of God. Down to the splinters, the coronation chair is the ancient heart of English sovereignty. Like the country around it, though, the throne hasn't been left unsullied by the tumult of time. 1914 saw the suffragettes place a bomb under the chair in a petition for their right to vote. The bomb, filled with nuts and bolts, shook the walls of the abbey,

• 6:18Matt Lewis?

  but the throne survived.

• 6:24Matt Lewis?

  It's now Christmas Eve, and as the December light begins to dim into the early evening, staff usher out the last visitors and scurry home to their celebrations, leaving the abbey empty save for the watchmen. They pace up and down the long corridors, weaving between the tombs and reliquies of old kings and saints. All who remain in the abbey are under the eternal gaze of the Virgin Mary and Jesus cast into ornate stained glass. These apertures slowly lose their luster and darken to black as the sun sets, and evening transforms itself into wintery night.

• 7:08Matt Lewis?

  The watchmen plod their same route, a route which had been carefully observed by our Scottish students the day before. Avoiding the gaze of the guards, Ian, Vernon and Stuart slip into the works yard of the abbey. Breaking into poet's corner, they're one step closer to the chapel and their prize. Another student in an unassuming forward anglia sits outside the abbey, engine humming as the three others creep up to the royal chair. Edward the First's fine creation, the coronation chair sits exposed, removed of all its pomp and magnificence in the dark, silent night. But Edward's chair isn't the target of this break-in.

• 7:50Matt Lewis?

  Under the seat of the throne, surrounded on each side by ornately carved lions, is a stone. A simple sandstone block, large and ungainly, you can still see the marks made by the tools used to carve it. Why would a king sit above this, something so plain, so out of place, against the fine ornate wooden throne? Filled with trepidation, the students manoeuvre their fingers around the stone, gripping as hard as they can onto the treacherously flat block. It's heavy and awkward as they pull, with some effort they begin sliding the stone away from the throne and into their arms. As the three students grasp the coronation stone, a harsh sound suddenly echoes through the chapel.

• 8:33Matt Lewis?

  A sound which stops them in their tracks and silences their frantic whispers.

• 8:45Matt Lewis?

  When the nuts and bolts of that makeshift suffragette bomb had ricocheted against it, a fracture had cut deep within the stone.

• 8:55Matt Lewis?

  This final moment of unrest had been enough. Even in the unlit chapel, the Christmas moonlight fell onto their precious stone. A stone that had been lying at rest for 700 years of British history, and now it had split in two.

• 9:13Matt Lewis?

  Hamilton, taking off his coat, has the solution. They lift the largest surviving part of the stone onto his jacket and drag it along the ancient floor. The smaller fragments can easily be carried out. Better a broken stone than no stone at all. Lurching out of the abbey, leaving the coronation chair behind, the students nervously make their way back to the cars, which are waiting in the streets of Westminster on what is now Christmas morning, 1950. The time is 5am and the ancient fragments are concealed, tucked up in the back. The weight of the stone sags the boot of the car as the Ford Anglia begins trundling back up north.

• 9:56Matt Lewis?

  The plan is nearly complete. This simple sandstone block, unassuming and unmoved for over 700 years. What is it about this stone that caused these students to break into Westminster Abbey? When you look closer, you can see the coarse grain of the stone is stained with bronze or brass remnants from an earlier time. A cross too is there, etched into the surface. It's not a grand or magnificent object with its tool marks and chipped exterior, and yet, as the students slip back into Scotland, headlines splash out on broadsheets and tabloids alike. They proclaim with great urgency the missing stone.

• 10:38Matt Lewis?

  For the first time in 400 years, the border between England and Scotland is shut in a frantic attempt to retrieve the object. In the arms of four students, it could have disappeared into obscurity. However, on the 26th of December 1950, it was found. A Boxing Day gift to the people of Scotland had been delivered. Sitting at the altar of Arbroath Abbey, draped in a Scottish flag, the Stone of Scone, also known as the Stone of Destiny, has finally returned to the lands where it was first formed.

• 11:16Matt Lewis?

  But what was so important about this stone? Why did it take four daring students to bring it back over the border after 700 years? And what does a 1950s heist have to do with Gommedieval? Well, to help explain all of that, I'm joined by Dorvitt Brune, Professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow, to explore the legends and the legacy of the Stone of Destiny.

• 11:47Matt Lewis?

  Welcome back to Gommedieval, Dorvitt. Great to have you with us again.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  Pleasure.

• 11:51Matt Lewis?

  And I'm looking forward to getting stuck into exactly what the Stone of Scone is and what it means to Scottish nationhood, I guess. But to start us off with, could you tell us a little bit about what the stone is? If you and I were looking at it right now, what would we see?

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Well, so if we were looking at it, I think we'd be surprised that there was such a fuss made of it, because it looks very plain and a little bit bashed up. It's not very big, oh dear, I'm not very good with sizes, but size is something we'll come back to. But let's say it's a slab which you could imagine a child sitting on. And what you'd see is two metal rings. That's the first thing you notice that's a little bit odd, two metal rings on either side. And the sort of joins, you know, where they are joined into the stone, that's been shaved down a bit. And, but there they are.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  So, so it's obviously designed to be carried at some stage. And you'd also notice that there's a very crude sort of rectangle etched on the top, which doesn't look very professionally done, shall we say, but it's definitely a feature. And otherwise, it just looks a wee bit bashed up. And there it is, in its glory.

• 13:12Matt Lewis?

  So I guess we might be surprised that it's not some kind of pristine, sharp, cornered piece of precious stone that it looks like it's been bashed around a little bit, maybe.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  It does. However, there is something always to bear in mind, which is that I find it very difficult to think of a situation in which anybody would actually see it naked, as it were. The earliest account, the only really detailed account we have of it being used in an inauguration ceremony, and that was when Alexander III was inaugurated on 13th June 1249, we're told that it was covered with silk golden cloths. So it was, it was not on, on sight, it was not, not, not on view for anybody. And of course, once it's in the chair

• 14:04Speaker 04

  of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, you can see a wee bit of it, but really not much. So it's an interesting question, if we want to be authentic about this, how far we're being authentic by revealing it in all its naked, rather unprepossessing state.

• 14:26Matt Lewis?

  No, no one was meant to see it like that. It's interesting then that the first record of it being kind of used is as late as 1249, because I think we probably think of it as a more ancient thing than that. How, do we get a sense of how it's used in that inauguration ceremony for Alexander?

• 14:43Speaker 04

  Yes. So the inauguration ceremony, I mean, just to start with, I mean, historical records are very hit and miss because things survive, things don't survive, things just don't get noted down. So there's just one thing we need to bear in mind is that things that are routine tend not to get noted down because nobody thinks they're terribly special. And that is important for this ceremony, Alexander III's inauguration, because it was a bit special. His dad, Alexander II, had gone to quite a lot of trouble and effort to try and get the inauguration ceremony changed radically because he wanted to be crowned and anointed like the

• 15:27Speaker 04

  very best kings in Latin Christendom were.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  Like the King of England and the King of France. And other kings were getting this privilege from the Pope. The King of Norway had been granted it in twelve forty seven. It's something that other kingdoms in Latin Christendom are aspiring to, and Scotland is no exception. The problem is that the Pope is getting quite a lot of noises off from the King of England. Saying, don't do that because really Scotland isn't the proper kingdom. It's really the King is a vassal and therefore, you know, please don't do this.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  Now, the Pope doesn't want to agree or disagree.

• 16:19Matt Lewis?

  Popes are very good at that, aren't they? At not really taking a position and just sitting somewhere in the middle and never quite making a decision.

• 16:24Speaker 04

  Exactly, and in practical matters, the Pope actually was quite at about this time, Innocent the Fourth. He basically was very blunt when Henry the Third suggested that a papal tax, that he collect a papal tax from Scotland as well as from England. And he was told rather brusquely by Innocent the Fourth that it's almost unheard of for a king to do that in another kingdom. So when it came to practical things, then of course Scotland functioned as an independent entity. But when it comes to these symbolic things, you know, the Pope just, why make an unpleasant scene with the King of England when it's not strictly necessary?

• 17:04Speaker 04

  So that's a rather long way of saying that Alexander the Second, he'd been trying to get the ceremony changed and he failed. Now, it isn't just Alexander, this becomes very clear, it isn't just Alexander the Second that's keen on this. It's the people who are closest to the kingship itself, the government, if you want, people like the Chancellor.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  The Chamberlain and other household officials. And we may be sure the leading bishops as well, because there are two things they do. One is that the most important symbolic object for a king, for a government indeed, is what they call the Great Seal. It's not a stone or a throne, it's the Great Seal. So this is the sort of impress that you use on wax that gets dangled down any official document and shows it's authentic. So this is extremely important and they changed the design in an important way. And that is they add a crown, because they're not crowned, you see.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  So all the way since Alexander the First, who was 1107 to 1134, all the way since then, the Great Seal had shown the King of Scots with nothing on their head at all, or perhaps a cap, it's really difficult to tell, of course, not a crown. So but they lost no time in saying, right, we're, we're going to have a crown now. And why this was their decision is because Alexander the Third was not quite eight years old. So they also changed the inauguration ceremony, probably. It's very difficult to tell definitively because we don't know what it was like before. But, but there is one thing that looks really odd, which is that instead of taking Alexander

• 18:51Speaker 04

  to be enthroned on the stone, so this is where the stone comes in, on the moat hill of Scone, which was more impressive then than it looks now, because it's been shaped and thinged as by the Earl of Mansfield a couple of centuries ago, because it's in his property. Instead of taking to the moat hill, which is what you'd expect, they go to a cross, it must have been a very fancy looking cross, in the graveyard of Scone Abbey. And he's enthroned there, he's put on the Stone of Scone there. That, at least it seems to me, is them trying to invoke what Anointment would have done. Anointment symbolizes the grace of God coming and transforming you into a new being, which is a king.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  So they're trying to get as close to the grace of God as they can that way. Something else they do is that they Take a wee ceremony from the Book of Kings in the Old Testament, where the the Lord's anointed, King of Judea, is enthroned, and then all the important people come and throw their cloaks at his feet. So that's what is described in the Bible, and that is what they do in the ceremony. So they're trying to trigger, you know, all these many symbols they can, I think, to say, okay, we're not able to do coronation and anointment, but he is actually King fully and by the grace of God, as he would have been had he been anointed.

• 20:14Matt Lewis?

  Fascinating how they're kind of bending what they're doing to try and make it as close to a coronation as they can get without kind of calling it a coronation.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Exactly. And I think it's it's it's very impressive. I mean, it's very ingenious. I dare say a lot of this may have been lost on the people, you know, anybody would come more or less and try and get a view of what was going on. But we shouldn't forget that there would have been a mass said, and of course, a sermon from the Bishopus and Andrews, and I'm sure he would have explained what they'd just seen. So the message would have got through fairly clearly. They also, by the way, this is quite significant, I think, is that he was, Alexander III was inaugurated a week after his father died. And when you bear in mind that his father died unexpectedly on the island of Caradha, which is not too far from Oban, and if you were to walk from there,

• 21:05Speaker 04

  it would take you three days to get from there to Scone. So they've put this together pretty hastily, which makes me wonder whether they were making it up. I mean, it'd be very impressive if they were, but I do wonder if, you know, there there have been a lot of thinking in advance. However, just as I say that, I realise that, of course, Alexander II, I mean, nobody expected him to die. But suppose final thought is that to go back to Alexander II himself wanting to have coronation and anointment, this was something on people's minds, you know, what do we do?

• 21:38Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, so Alexander II might have been making preparations for the next coronation, whatever that might look like, to get it more more like a coronation that other people would recognise. So there were sort of plans there that everyone was able to pick up and put into action quite quickly.

• 21:53Speaker 04

  Well, exactly. I mean, it's a total speculation. I mean, it could just have been something they talked about over dinner. I mean, you know, what do we do as the latest rejection came in from the Pope? You know, okay, what do we do if, we don't expect you to die soon, Your Majesty, but, you know, let's just think about this. Or maybe he's, it's lovely to imagine these sort of conversations.

• 22:18Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it's funny to think how much of these things that we think are very carefully planned out and thought out and incredibly symbolic are maybe just made up on the fly by people doing something in a hurry.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 22:31Matt Lewis?

  And do we get a sense of the role that the stone plays? Does Alexander sit on it, stand on it? Is there something placed above it?

• 22:37Speaker 04

  Exactly. So the stone plays a critical role because in the account that we have, which is ultimately a contemporary account, he is described as he's led to the stone, which is covered with these silk gold cloths by this impressive cross in the cemetery. As he's led there, he's described as the king that's soon to be, Rex Boxfuturus, the king that's soon to be. And of course, once he's put on the stone, he then is the king. So that moment, it's equivalent of anointment, you know, that moment when he's placed on the stone, which nobody can see, all they can see is this something hard underneath silk cloths, he becomes king and he's placed on the stone,

• 23:22Speaker 04

  not by the Bishopless and Andrews, but by the Earl of Fife and the Alistair Tharn. So they are the most senior nobles.

• 23:30Matt Lewis?

  Fascinating that that becomes the moment, sort of the equivalent of the Becket's anointing oil in an English coronation kind of thing. That is the moment that transforms him. His contact with the Stone of Scone is what makes him a king.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly.

• 23:42Matt Lewis?

  And do we get a sense then of when, if we're on the first recorded use in 1249, do we get a sense of when myth and legend tells us the stone originally came into use and perhaps where it came from?

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Yes, so there are legends and something just to bear in mind is that whenever we're thinking about the stone being used, whenever we're thinking about legends being there, they have to start sometime in reality. You know, somebody has had to decide to use the stone for the first time, somebody's had to decide what the lead, you know, how are we going to talk about this? What's, what's the story that we're, that's being told? And I'm seeing all this because there, there is a puzzle about the stone, which is how small it is. And my own personal hunch is that it was bearing in mind how quickly they had to put things together for Alexander the Third, that they came up with this idea

• 24:40Speaker 04

  and it was really, they were just thinking about him. Cause you know, nearly eight years old, if you're sitting on it, you, you look fairly dignified. If you're a normal sized man, you wouldn't. You're squatting. It looks terrible, which is why of course it gets stuck in a chair and yeah, you know, it's never, there's no mention of chairs or anything like thrones, anything like that. There wouldn't be time to put it together for twelve forty-nine. So my, my hunch is that that description was actually the first time it was used and then you'd have to explain what it was. Now, the, there, there is a legend which is repeated

• 25:18Speaker 04

  in Scottish sources and it can be traced back to a sort of compendium of texts, brief texts about the kingdom's history. So it gives an account of Scottish origins and it gives a list of kings of Scots, kings of Picts and so on. So it gives you a potted history of, of the whole kingdom. So the legends, so that, that compendium, you can trace it back to the reign of John Baileal, so that's sometime between twelve ninety-two and thirteen oh four, which is when the last government in his name finally collapsed. But it's going to be older than that because that's just when it gets put into the compendium.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  What is striking about it is that it ends, the legend ends with the Stone of Scone being brought to Scone by the first ever king of Scots. And we're told it's there forevermore. Now, there's, there's actually a manuscript, it's a, it's an early 16th century manuscript, which has recently come to light, and it seems to have preserved the earliest version of this compendium, and therefore give us the earliest version of the legend itself. So just to give you the story in outline, it explains that a certain king of Spain

• 26:40Speaker 04

  had many sons, and there was one who he was particularly keen on called Simon Brech. That's a figure from the royal genealogy, so that's not made up from scratch. And he, he, so this king of Spain liked this son, the son wasn't his heir. So he gave him a certain stone on which all kings of Spain were accustomed to sit. And, and this was, and I'm just reading it here, it's like an anchor for the kingdom. And then he gives this to Simon, and Simon, Simon Brech sets off with an army to Ireland, takes Ireland and sets up the stone in Tara, the most eminent place of that country, we said, which is called place of kings up to the present day.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  So, so they know, they know about Ireland and they know about Tara as the most sacred site of kingship. And then they say, after a long time, descendants of Simon Brech came from Ireland, somebody called Ferigus, son of Fericar, then he took the stone with him from Ireland to Scone. And then this is the interesting bit, in this version, in this manuscript that's just recently come to light, and it says, place it in Scone, and it is there up to the present day, and is the royal stone as it always was, and the same place is the royal place and will be forever. And then it finishes with the famous verse, unless the fates be false, wherever the Scots find the stone is placed, they are held to reign there.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  That's a, that's my sort of rather clunky translation. That's why it's called the Stone of Destiny, because of that sense of the prophesying, and wherever it will be. The Scots will reign, which of course was a comforting thought when Edward the First took it down to Westminster. Now, we're back into speculation here, but you'll notice they're protesting very loudly about how important the stone is and how it's always in Scone. And now Scone has definitely been the inauguration, the place of inauguration for quite a while. Difficult to say how long, but at first gets mentioned as a royal city at the beginning of the 10th century. So we're looking at something that's been part of the pattern of inauguration for a very, very long time. But that doesn't mean

• 28:53Speaker 04

  the stone was there at all. So one way you could make sense of this is that, you know, in the effort that they were putting to make this inauguration as special as they can, they have come up with this piece of its local sandstone and repurposed it, remembering nobody's going to see it. And they repurposed it and put the story along with it. Now, the idea of the kings coming and the Scots coming from Ireland and eventually from Greece and Egypt and so on is well established. So that's not new. But they've added all this and via Spain, that's not new. But this, they really added this extra dimension, which

• 29:36Speaker 04

  is, which is the stone. So they're wanting to project this image of the Scottish kingdom having been there from the ancient, ancient, ancient times. And it's like they're giving a tangible, very tangible symbol of that antiquity.

• 29:55Matt Lewis?

  And I guess it's interesting to wonder whether around 1249, they may be feeling the need to create this physical connection to the past of the Scots kings. You say there's this history from, from Spain, Greece, Egypt, you know, going back to the times of Moses, they want to trace their roots there. And this is almost like putting a piece of stone in front of someone and saying, there you go, there's the proof.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. It sort of brings it alive. Goodness knows how well known the origin legend was. I mean, it may be something that clerics would know a lot about, but not other people particularly, I'm guessing completely. But, but my goodness, they are, they're making this something that nobody will forget.

• 30:35Matt Lewis?

  And I guess there's something of a Gaelic connection in here. The Lea Fail is there at Tara.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:39Matt Lewis?

  Which is the, the singing stone of kings, a kind of stone of destiny in Ireland. Is there any connection between the two concepts of a stone that identifies or makes a king?

• 30:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I mean, in, in a probably an indirect way, to be honest. Obviously, as soon as you've got the legend of the Stone of Scone articulated and, and taken up enthusiastically, it becomes very well established. And then of course, because it mentions Tara, it's very easy for people to make a link later on, to make a link with the Lea Fail. But I don't think, there's no trace of that being in their minds. At least if they really wanted us to know that, they would have told us, I think, in the legend.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of the best one yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 32:10Speaker 05

  After civil war, regicide, and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:55Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And I guess the thing that people in a medieval sense, perhaps outside of Scotland, will know best about the Stone of Scone is the story of it leaving Scotland. Could you just set the scene for us around the situation in which Edward I comes to Scotland and identifies the Stone of Scone as something that he is going to take away from Scotland? He must have thought it was something of critical importance to Scottish identity for him to want to take it away?

• 33:24Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, it starts, I suppose, with Alexander III, Edward I, they are closely related and get on very well. So, you know, there's no sign of trouble there at all. But when Alexander III dies unexpectedly, 19th of March 1286, leaving his granddaughter, who's in Norway, as his only heir, you can see sort of Edward I perfectly naturally wanting to make the most of any opportunity he can, because he'll have been acutely aware, as everybody

• 34:04Speaker 04

  was, of other legends, if you like, which proclaimed a very ancient history of Britain as a single kingdom. And, I mean, this was elaborated in the 1130s. And so they really took this to heart. So, you know, at the back of everybody's mind, and then I remember I've said that, so this was Edward I's father, Henry III, you know, I'd said to the Pope, "Don't give them coronation rime, because really they're my vassals." This is the sort of idea that's at the back of their mind. Trouble is, it's not something, if you're a king in those days, that you just have in the back of your mind as something to talk about. It's sort of broods there as, you know, "This is my inheritance, and I've really got

• 34:48Speaker 04

  to live up to it." But he does this in a very pragmatic way to start with. He thinks about Margaret's her name, the granddaughter Alexander III, marrying Edward I, eldest son of heir, the future Edward II. I mean, they're, goodness me, how old are they? But they're, you know, in primary school age. They really are. Very, very young, but that looks like it's going to happen. And it gets far as Margaret's coming to, from leaving Norway in September twelve ninety and she dies en route. Because you can see that Edward is, it's very practical and, you know, because of course, any kids that Margaret and Edward the Second would have had would have been kings of both realms and you'd have ended up with one kingdom, so the Union of Crowns, just like eventually it happened in eighteen oh three.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  He then makes a fateful decision and it actually takes him quite a few months to do this, you know, what to do now with Margaret's dead, that plan is finished. It's very unclear about who the next king is going to be. There's no obvious heir anymore. Robert Bruce's grandfather, the future king, says it should be him and John Baelial says it should be him. And there are a few others who pop up and say, you know, try and get a bit of the action, but they're the two main ones. And it takes Edward the First, it's about six months to make up his mind what he's going to do. And in that time, again, if you'll allow me to speculate, in that time, he, his wife Eleanor of Castile dies.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  And I do wonder, because there's a big change, I'm afraid, and it's like he loses his practical acumen and you know, just common sense really. And he just pushes the red button, if you like, the, the Exocet missile, I'm afraid, which is what we've had to live with ever since. Which is, he decides that he's actually going to go to the, well, will tell the Scots leaders, the people governing Scotland at the time, to meet him and be told that actually Scotland, because, you know, basically it's a vassal country, he is going to now be the overlord and he's going to decide who the next king is going to be. The context here is that the government at the time, the Scottish government,

• 36:59Speaker 04

  there were a committee of guardians, had asked Edward the First to come and help them because they needed somebody powerful to arbitrate between Bruce and Baelial. This is not uncommon. Henry the Third had gone to terrible difficulties with his barons and he invited the King of France to come and arbitrate. So if you're a king or a kingdom in trouble, this is what you do. And you need a powerful neighbour because at the end of the day, they've got to be able to knock heads together if that's required. So that was a perfectly natural thing to do. And Edward the First could have done that. He could have come as arbitrator, gone through a process, declared, but he didn't. And he made the fateful decision. To claim overlordship. And I'm afraid that then is the moment where you you lead up

• 37:43Speaker 04

  to the Stone of Scone, ending up in Westminster. Because at the end of the day, we end up with John Baileal being inaugurated king, and that's using the Stone of Scone. However, unlike any of his predecessors, he is a vassal king, unambiguously, because he has to do homage to Edward the First before, he has to do homage immediately afterwards. He also has to renounce Edward the First's promises that he'd given the Scottish leaders in the run up to the anticipated marriage between Alexander's granddaughter and Edward Isaur, promises about how Scotland would be governed in the event of, you know, the marriage and there being one monarch. And the promises are all about respecting Scottish independence. So John

• 38:28Speaker 04

  Baileal then had to renounce all that. So Edward the First took took full advantage of the situation to make it clear, not only that he was an overlord in some sort of soft, fuzzy sense, you know, come and do homage now and again, but I'll leave you in peace. He wasn't going to do that. He was going to be overlord fully, which meant that for the first time, decisions made by the Scottish king, judicial decisions made by the Scottish king, indeed by the Scottish parliament, could be appealed to the King of England. So that's, so this is full jurisdiction, that extremely unsettling if you are a Scottish nobleman, or anybody who has lots of lands and privileges and possessions. Because up

• 39:12Speaker 04

  to then, the King of Scots had been your guarantee. Now it's the King of England. And the King of Scots was a very light touch kind of kingship. The King of England is not, never has been since the conquest of ten sixty six, much more intrusive. So this is very unsettling. And eventually, when Edward the First assumes that they're all going to turn up for his army to invade France, his war with the King of France, in twelve ninety five, twelve ninety six, the Scottish leaders refuse, and they get John Baileal to refuse. So that triggers eventually Edward the First in March twelve ninety six comes

• 39:52Speaker 04

  north, and he conquers Scotland. It's a fairly straightforward business militarily. And now he's got to the point, so he's tried. Having Scotland initially, he's tried having a Union of the Crowns, that's just not happened for natural causes. He's tried having the King of Scots as a vassal and him exercising jurisdiction as a court of appeal. That now hasn't worked. So he's now taking the step of abolishing the kingdom altogether. So he's saying there is now no longer a kingdom of Scotland, it's just a land. He's going to rule it directly. So all the Scottish sheriffs and everybody else are

• 40:33Speaker 04

  dismissed. He puts in his own people and it's in that context that of course he takes away the Stone of Scone because the Stone of Scone symbolises the ancient kingdom that Edward the First is now abolishing. So off it goes to Westminster to become part of the English coronation throne.

• 40:53Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, and it's so fascinating to think about, as you mentioned, the timing of the death of Edward's wife and, you know, we have the Eleanor Crosses as a symbol of his, his love for her, I guess, and how much that personal loss may have affected huge political events that we're still feeling the, the aftershocks of today. You know, they've, they've set politics in motion for 800 years because of Edward's loss and grief at the time perhaps.

• 41:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 41:26Matt Lewis?

  But also interesting that to think if the Stone of Scone was invented as this coronation stone in 1259, that that becomes a little bit of a trigger for Edward's action. You know, there, if the Scots are going to take a step closer to identifying themselves as a kingdom on a par with England, then he's going to have to, to step up and deal with that directly. So almost the Stone of Scone causes Edward to feel like he has to confront the issue of what kind of kingdom Scotland is.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Well, exactly. But I think, as I say, when, when he is confronting the issue of the Stone of Scone, it's because he's actually wanting to rob out the Scottish kingdom definitively. And I mean, it's interesting just to go back to before any of this kicked off and Alexander III and Edward I had a very good working relationship. There was, I mean, there was only a little bit of tension when Edward I became king and then because Alexander III has significant lordships in England, he had to do homage. And, you know, Edward I tries it out. To say, you know, how about he gets the Bishop of Norwich to do this for him to sort of in the middle of the ceremony to sort of say, wait a minute, aren't you King of,

• 42:36Speaker 04

  you know, your Majesty King of Scots, aren't you doing homage for Scotland? And he gets told very quickly, no, I owe homage for Scotland to God alone. And they just let the matter rest. That's they're not going to make a hoo-ha about it. It has taken four years for them to do the ceremony. And interestingly, Edward the First comes back from crusade and becomes King in twelve seventy four, as is twelve seventy eight. And they they have sort of attempts to do it. So it's it's everybody knows this is highly charged. But it's like, nobody's gonna really, it's already very sensitive. They're not going to make it worse than it has to be. And they end up doing it in private. Well, not totally

• 43:20Speaker 04

  in private, of course, it's in Westminster Hall. But the point is, it's invitees only. Unlike, for example, Alexander III's grandfather, who when John became King of England, I mean, William was perfectly happy to do this in the open air in a mound in Lincoln, which that must have been seen by anybody that wanted to be there. So, you know, there was no, I mean, there was no preciousness about it at all. So things have changed. The whole idea about what kingship is, has changed. And this is very touchy matter. But they just get on with life. You know, they get over that and then get on with it. So that that is how things could have been. And but unfortunately, as I say, the force of

• 44:05Speaker 04

  circumstance, as we've, as we've described, leads ourselves in a position where Edward the First just makes that awful decision. And there we are with the two. Now, when I say he was trying to rub out the King of Scotland, he knows this is this is tricky in terms of public opinion in Latin Christendom. The equivalent to the UN, if you like. He knows this is tricky because what he's done is he has conquered and is now trying to erase a Christian kingdom. And so he's got to justify this. So what he does is it takes a few years to do this, but he puts together, basically rewrites history. He takes an account of all the things that have happened, particularly in deciding how John Billups was going to be king.

• 44:48Speaker 04

  And he he rewrites this in the most legally authentic way he can. And this is then, this is still there in the National Archives in Kew. It's very, very impressive. But it is a rewrite and the original documents about what actually happened survive. So historians have been able to piece together what, well, Archie Duncan was the the main person who really cottoned on to this and was able to piece together what actually happens. And it's not the way, because what Edward the First wanted to prove is that the Scottish leaders recognized immediately that he was the overlord. They didn't put up any resistance and they just said, of course, you're the overlord.

• 45:30Speaker 04

  Because then everything flowed from that, because then he could say, when they refused to come and fight for me in France and and they renounced their homage, well, that was them. They they therefore renounced their lands. So the kingdom was forfeit, basically, treated like any lordship. And therefore it was his to wipe out if he wished.

• 46:04Speaker 01

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• 46:37Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 47:27Matt Lewis?

  Fascinating, complex game of 3D chess that everybody's playing with. Very important concept here. I guess we ought to as well deal with some of the theories that the real Stone of Scone was never actually taken, that it was hidden. Where do you stand on some of those ideas?

• 47:45Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, I mean, when you look at it, it's difficult to see how it couldn't be the one that Edward the First took away with him. But also, you know, at the end of the day, it's nothing on its own. It's only something because we think it is and because they thought it was, because they created the stories about it. Intrinsically of itself, it is nothing. So if you bear that in mind, then actually what they've got in Perth, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter really. Because as long as it's credible, as it's a credible thing that this is the one. It's a really good exhibition, by the way. I would encourage anybody to go. It's really, really wonderfully done.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  And you can just see how insignificant the thing actually is as an object.

• 48:34Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, so it almost doesn't matter whether what Edward took was the real Stone of Scone or not. It matters that he took the idea of the Stone of Scone away from Scotland.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  That's a brilliant way to put it. Yeah.

• 48:44Matt Lewis?

  And you did kind of allude to this a little bit earlier, but what does Edward do with it? And what is he trying to convey? What message is he trying to give by what he does with it?

• 48:52Speaker 04

  I mean, it's a very symbolic object, so he's very aware of that. So by creating this new coronation throne for future kings of England, which includes the Stone of Scone, it couldn't be more... Tangibly obvious that that the kingdom that the stone used to represent is now completely incorporated into the kingdom that the future kings of England reign over. So it's it's it's pretty, well, unsubtle is a not an appropriate way because it is, it's impressive. It's an impressive statement. And there it was until 1996.

• 49:31Matt Lewis?

  And I guess something that everybody who needed to understand it would clearly understand, you know, a modern audience might need a little asterisk next to it to explain that the Stone of Scone is underneath here because that's important to Scotland. And here we're symbolically putting the King of England sitting on top of the the Stone of Scone of Scotland. But a medieval audience would have been entirely clear what what message Edward was sending by doing that.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  I think so. And by the way, it's an interesting thing. Eventually, eventually, Edward III, it is, recognizes Scotland as an independent kingdom. That's right towards the end of Robert Bruce's reign. And by the way, as a consequence of that, the Pope awards a coronation renoitation to the kings of Scots. So after 1329, well, the first king to have this is David II in 1331. Thereafter, they're crowned and anointed. But there was a suggestion, this wasn't written into the treaty, but there was a suggestion, you know, that the stone might be taken back to Scotland. And the people of London rose up in outrage

• 50:37Speaker 04

  at this. They identified very much with them had been at the heart of the Kingdom of England, and they weren't going to have it denuded of any of its trophies.

• 50:48Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. So interesting that as Scotland might have felt like it's it's won that almost 100 year battle to become a kingdom that has the anointing ceremony and is recognized as that kind of top tier of kingdom. They've almost won that with the Stone of Scone having played a part in perhaps bringing it towards a crisis. But now they can't get it back.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  Well, but they don't really make an effort, to be honest. Because it's not important.

• 51:12Matt Lewis?

  Which perhaps leans into what you're saying about the fact that this isn't quite the centuries old, vastly important thing that everybody is claiming it to be. They're actually quite happy for it not to be there for a while.

• 51:24Speaker 04

  Well, and I think, because it just doesn't come up as an issue. And I think it's because they've got coronation annoyance. They've got this idea very firmly established that they are an ancient kingdom, so much so that in the late Middle Ages, although Scotland was not a wealthy country, well, just to be clear, the kings were not wealthy because they didn't have the means to, shall we say, exploit their subjects to the same extent that a King of England or a King of France could. So the kings weren't wealthy. So if you imagine in Latin Christendom and you're a royal family, you know, why would you marry into the Scottish royal family? And in the 15th century, James I, he has lots of daughters.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  So this becomes a bit of a bit of an issue. And the reason they do is because it's regarded as one of the most ancient kingdoms in Latin Christendom. That's propaganda is a very easy word to use, but that suggests something that's very deliberate and, and, you know, try to fool people and all the rest of it. It's actually, when you trace it, you can see it's just a sort of development of textual accidents, if you like, that that ends up with this sense of being, you know, as the Declaration of Abraham puts it, 113 kings without the intervention of a foreigner. So without any foreigner sort of among them.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  So that that sense, and this was particularly felt by somebody like the Duke of Burgundy in the 15th century. They were the most wealthy. Okay. Well, I suppose with the exception of the King of France perhaps, but they do, they're immensely wealthy and powerful in Europe, north of the Alps, you know, controlling the Low Countries where, which is the economic hub of Europe, north of the, north of the Alps. And yet they're dukes of Burgundy. They're not kings. They try, but you can't just make yourself king. You've got to get the Pope or the Emperor to cooperate. And they, so they try. And all they end up with, by the

• 53:29Speaker 04

  way, is a sort of hat that's sort of bejeweled and got some feathers. It looks, it looks very weird. But, you know, they're, they're keen to marry into the, you know, have, have dealings with the Scottish royal family and think about marrying in and so on because of this business of being the most ancient kingdom. And there is a manuscript, it's a, it's a, well, manuscript book, which is an account of Scottish history that belonged to the Duke of Burgundy. It's still there in Brussels. And if you go and see it, it includes a copy of the Declaration of Arbroath, and it has this statement about 113 kings. And somebody in Burgundy in the 15th century has written in the margins, you know, pointing this out

• 54:12Speaker 04

  how significant this is. So this matters. This is, this, this is something that really Scotland had to offer, even though it most certainly didn't have, you know, the kind of riches that a royal family would normally have elsewhere.

• 54:27Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, fascinating. I mean, it sounds an awful lot like the Stone of Scone, without wishing to diminish its importance. The Stone of Scone was effectively, I'm trying to say, not say stepping stone, but I'm going to say stepping stone.

• 54:38Speaker 04

  That's very good.

• 54:38Matt Lewis?

  Towards the anointment, at which point it could have become irrelevant, and it almost physically becomes irrelevant to the Scottish ceremony at least, because it's no longer in Scotland. But the, symbolically, it still does remain important, doesn't it? And, and I wondered if we could step slightly out of our, outside of our medieval period, we, we dare sometimes to venture forward. I, I'm wondering about the people's views of the Stone of Scone when James VI becomes James I of Scotland. Is there some sense that the Stone of Destiny has worked? The Scottish king is now ruling in London where the stone is?

• 55:12Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, because they haven't forgotten the legend. The legend gets repeated. And they're particularly keen on the destiny part of it, that sort of prophecy. So it's very easy to then to view this as a prophecy coming alive. I mean, Scottish kings and...

• 55:31Speaker 04

  Some elements of Scottish opinion had for for a while had this idea actually that their king should be the King of Britain anyway. This is because of being descended from the Anglo Saxon kings of England through St Margaret, you see. So, you know, William the First and the Normans and all the rest of it, everybody since ten sixty six were conquerors illegitimate. Really, it should be the King of Scots. So that's an idea that was becoming quite quite active at the point when James the Fourth married Margaret Tudor. And it's that union, which eventually means that James the Sixth ends up as the heir to Elizabeth the First.

• 56:12Speaker 04

  So even a hundred years earlier, there was this excitement about the prospects of the King of Scots becoming King of England and fulfilling this other destiny of being the descendants of the Old English kings, pre conquest kings, and coming back into their inheritance. So it wasn't just about the Stone of Skye.

• 56:32Matt Lewis?

  And how significant was it when the stone was eventually returned to Scotland? What did that mean for Scotland?

• 56:40Speaker 04

  That's a really interesting question, and you'd want to ask more than one person about it, I'm sure. I remember it vividly. And what struck me at the time was that, you know, the, I mean, remember, this was the dying days of the Tory governments, which had real trouble convincing people in Scotland to vote for them. And for quite a while, they were down to ten MPs for a while. And then, oh, no, it was after ninety seven, they were wiped out. Anyway, it was looking very serious for them. So Michael Forsyth, the ingenious Secretary of State for Scotland at the time, sort of came up with this idea, basically,

• 57:20Speaker 04

  that, you know, show that they're really patriotic for Scotland. So there was a hoo ha done about it. There was a wee ceremony as the stone crossed the border at Coldstream. And then a sort of ceremony was laid on in Edinburgh as it was taken up to the castle, which is where it was put at that stage. I don't remember there being huge crowds of people coming out to see it, to be honest. And in a strange way, it was almost like the significance of it for everybody, because we'd grown up with it, was the fact that it was in Westminster and how terrible that was. No, it wasn't there anymore. It was like, well, okay.

• 58:01Matt Lewis?

  Just taking away a chance to complain about something.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. But that's why I think it's lovely what they've done in Perth. You know, the way they displayed it and the stories that they they attach to it and explain is, I think that's that's now something which is bringing it into the 21st century and making it something which is just a a point of reference to reflect on Scottish history.

• 58:27Matt Lewis?

  And does it play any role into the modern Scottish nationalism? We've had, you know, kind of referendums about Scottish independence and things like that. Does the Stone of Scone crop up in arguments about that kind of thing?

• 58:37Speaker 04

  It mattered way back in 1950, you know, when it was not in Scotland. But there is a fascinating project that Sally Foster and Stirling University has been doing for a couple of years, which is just getting a lot of different perspectives on how people feel about the Stone of Scone, the stories associated with it. And for example, tracking the 34 fragments that were kept and carefully numbered when it was repaired. Because when it was taken from Westminster Abbey in Christmas Day, was it 1950? It actually fell apart. There was a crack already and it just, you know, the strain of moving it, it fell into two.

• 59:21Speaker 04

  So they took it to somebody who, a stonemason, who had been one of the founding members of the SNP. And he knew what to do and he put it together, restored it. And in the process, you know, there are bits that will fall off or just chip off. So he kept them all. And he gave them to family members and he gave them to people, prominent people who he thought were appreciated. So it is, for some people, has this iconic status still.

• 59:51Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, we should probably just mention that that that effort to take it in 1950 was kind of a group of students from, was it Glasgow University? Who decided they were going to liberate it from Westminster and take it back to Scotland.

• 1:00:03Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. An amazingly audacious move, which they were successful, which is extraordinary because the the newsreels at the time, I mean, it felt like the whole UK was locked down as they tried to sort of find the dastardly people who had taken it away. But

• 1:00:23Speaker 04

  Yes, indeed. So, yes, it was a group of students inspired by, at the time, there was a movement called the National Covenant, led by somebody called John McCormick. And they were, they were trying to have a measure of home rule. Because remember, the Scottish Parliament didn't exist until 1999, as a result of the referendum in 97. So, just a measure of home rule. And was it a million people signed the petition or something? It was a big, it was a big movement at the time. And of course, that got nowhere. So it was in that context that they, they, they thought it was appropriate to step things up a bit.

• 1:01:00Matt Lewis?

  Fascinating. I mean, to try and sum up, I don't want to put words in your mouth. So tell me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds to me like you think the Stone of Scone probably isn't the ancient artefact that it's often claimed to be, that it's maybe just a random 13th century lump of sandstone.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, whether it's how random it is, I'm not entirely sure, but it is, it's not purpose built. No, no, it's, it's had a previous life, which may not have been a particularly distinguished previous life. And there's, there's sort of wear and tear. It looks like it might have been a step. So people, some people think it might have been a step somewhere or something. Anyway, whatever it was, originally it was, it was then repurposed. But that's right. And, and I think, I mean, it is ultimately speculation. But at the end of the day, it, somebody has to have, because it's local sandstone. So it's, somebody has got to decide at some point, we're going to use it as the throne for inauguration. And then somebody at some point has to develop this. The stories don't just happen, you

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  know, out of nothing. Somebody has to put them together.

• 1:02:02Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And then you think, you would say that the stone that Edward the first took is the Stone of Scone and kind of even if it wasn't, it doesn't really matter?

• 1:02:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's basically, basically, I mean, I'm sure it is the, it was the real thing, as it were, and it's the real thing there in person now. No reason to suspect that it isn't. But at the end of the day, it's the idea that it's the stone that counts most of all. And the idea that it is the stone that was taken from, from Spain to Ireland, and then from Ireland to Scotland by the very first King of Scots, Fergus, son of Feric.

• 1:02:36Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And just to end on, just to think a little bit about the legacy of the Stone of Skoon. You know, someone in July today, I think an Australian broke in and tried to break the glass around the Stone of Skoon. So people are still looking to interact, connect with that stone in various ways. Never going to condone trying to smash the case around it or anything like that. But people still feel a connection to it today. What would you say is the legacy of the Stone of Skoon in 2025?

• 1:03:06Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, very good, very good question. Nations are strange things, products of history, circumstance, all sorts of things. And we need, if we want to have something, some way of feeling that we belong together, there are all sorts of different ways of doing that. But one of the ways is to have points of reference. And these are usually symbolic. And I think it's quite nice that we've got something as sort of nice and ordinary and not very ostentatious, like this lump of stone, which we have made precious by the stories we tell. And that really comes back to ultimately, what any sort of sense of identity, nationhood, etc, is about, is about the stories that we, we tell about

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  ourselves, because it's through stories that we have meaning in the world we live in. Stories are not just ephemera and fiction at all. They are what give us meaning, particularly as society, as well as individuals.

• 1:04:04Matt Lewis?

  And I guess, as we mentioned a little bit earlier, if the idea of the Stone of Skoon was to create a physical representation of those stories, myths, legends about the Scots people and the emergence of the Scots nation, then it's worked. 700 years later, it still represents a degree of that to a lot of people. So it worked as a physical embodiment of that history and those stories.

• 1:04:28Speaker 04

  Definitely. That's a really good way to put it. It's been absolutely fantastic

• 1:04:32Matt Lewis?

  to talk to you, Dorv. I feel like we could do this all day. There are so many different ways to think about the Stone of Skoon and its connections to all sorts of things. But it's been fascinating to try and dig into this with you a little bit deeper. Thank you very much.

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  It's been a great pleasure.

• 1:04:47Matt Lewis?

  I hope you enjoyed hearing about this fascinating relic. There are episodes in our back catalogue on the declaration of our growth, which Dorvit also features in, as well as on William Wallace and Edward the First, too. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free. Head to historyhit.com/subscribe right now. Anyway, I'd better let you go.

• 1:05:30Matt Lewis?

  I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalised AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.